The Pentagon’s top commander in the Middle East told Congress today that Iraq’s self-defense gives the United States a legal justification to intervene in next-door Syria.
US Central Command chief Joseph Votel told the House Armed Services Committee that the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), signed by President George W. Bush to go after the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, remains in effect for the US fight against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. As US troops hunt down some 2,000 remaining IS fighters in the Euphrates River Valley, the legal core of the US involvement in Syria derives from Iraq’s defense, he said.
